At least 18 people died and five others were badly burnt on Tuesday when a helicopter crashed in northeast India close to the border with China, a local police chief told Agence France Presse.

"The numbers of those killed are 18 and five people badly burnt have been taken to hospital in Tawang," said S.B. Singh, police inspector general of Arunachal Pradesh state, amending the earlier death toll of 20.

Indian housewife Sujata Budarapu was shocked when she was told that her two sons were on the verge of developing Type 2 diabetes.

"It had never even occurred to me that this could happen. I had heard that outside India this happens to other people's kids but I never thought it would happen to my own," the 38-year-old from Mumbai told Agence France Presse.

The electricity keeps cutting out, the Internet connection is crackly and the speakers don't always work, but Santosh Kumar knows that 20 pupils far away in eastern India are relying on him.

Once a week, Kumar uses the Skype computer program to teach maths to children in Chamanpura, a poor village in the struggling state of Bihar, 600 miles (970 kilometers) from his two-storey house in the suburbs of New Delhi.

Urgent global action is needed to prevent the spread of a multi-drug-resistant "superbug" after it was found in water supplies in the Indian capital, doctors said in research published Thursday.

The study in The Lancet medical journal said that New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase 1 (NDM-1) producing bacteria were found in 51 out of 171 samples taken from water pools and rivulets and two out of 50 tap water samples in the city.

One of India's best-known spiritual leaders, famous for his apparent miracles and long list of influential followers, is on life support in a southern hospital, officials said Tuesday.

Satya Sai Baba, 85, who has devotees in more than 100 countries, was admitted to a hospital funded by his organization in the town of Puttaparthi with lung and chest congestion on March 28.

Most Indians are missing out on the "digital revolution" due to poor Internet access for the nation's poor, despite the economy boasting one of the world's strongest growth rates, a study found.

The study said India was at "extreme risk" from a lack of "digital inclusion" -- along with sub-Saharan Africa -- as a vast proportion of its 1.2 billion population were being left behind shut out of the so-called.

India is set to pay Iran for billions of dollars worth of oil imports by channeling funds to Tehran via the German central bank, a German newspaper report said Monday.

Under pressure from the United States to break direct commercial links with the Islamic republic, India intends to place money for its Iranian oil imports in an account with the Bundesbank, the Handelsblatt business daily reported.

When 80-year-old Indian widow Kanwri Devi Surana suffered a mild heart attack last year, she pledged to fast herself to death in a religious practice known as "santhara".

Her distraught family says she gave up food and then water, and passed away in Kolkata 62 days after making her vow.

Namrata, a Delhi University student, turned an iPad tablet computer round in her hands at an electronics store in the city. It is Apple's latest must-have item -- yet it is already out of date.

"No, I'll wait for the iPad 2," she said, putting it back on the shelf, aware that the improved version has already gone on sale in the United States. "Perhaps my aunt in Australia will be able to send me one soon," she said.

The Indian navy has captured 61 suspected Somali pirates and rescued 13 fishermen after a firefight with a pirate mother ship in the Arabian Sea, a navy spokesman said Monday.

"A total of 74 men have been apprehended of which 61 are suspected to be Somali pirates," Indian navy spokesman P.V.S Satish said, adding the incident happened on Saturday night within Indian waters.